2023 has been a year like never before. It is on track to be the hottest year ever on record. And that means it is also a year of record human suffering.
We don’t need to go through complex research studies, or pore over IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports to know what that suffering is. Just look back on the months gone by.
It is very likely that you or your family members have suffered any of the following: illness due to extreme heat and humidity, flooding in the neighbourhood, skyrocketing prices of vegetables, dengue or malaria, extremely heavy rainfall, extended water cuts, or prolonged power outages.
With its presence in 470 districts of the country, Gaon Connection, which is India’s biggest rural communication and insights platform, has its ear to the ground and through its network of reporters and community journalists, has reported on issues of climate change almost every other day.
Gaon Connection is the voice of rural India where two-thirds of the citizens of the country live, who, away from media spotlight, suffer the impacts of a changing climate. They have faced repeated crop losses, multiplying wage losses, and increasing health problems, due to increasing temperatures, erratic monsoon, or recurring floods.
These are concerns that should trouble us all no matter where we live as rural India is also the food bowl of the world. What reaches your plate in a fine dining restaurant in Gurugram or Mumbai is the result of a toiling farmer who worked hard in her or his field tending crops for months till it was ready for harvest.
Floods for a long time were associated only with the rural hinterland where over the decades people have found some ways to cope with the annual cycle of disaster. Therefore they rarely received serious attention. However urban floods have now become a reality. They are recurring, destructive and undoubtedly a consequence of poor urban planning. But climate change has a key role to play too.
Changing rainfall patterns are leaving cities quite literally marooned and knee deep in trouble. Then, when there are long dry gaps in the monsoon season, it affects water sources.
I moved to Mumbai, in January 2005, the same year of the Mumbai floods hit the metropolis on July 26. It was traumatic. There were power outage (Mumbai never has any power cuts so no one stocks up candles or a torch) when the city plunged into darkness; there was several feet of flood waters everywhere, the trains stopped, the airport shut down, there was no drinking water at home, mobile phones ran out of charge, and my husband was stuck in his office with absolutely no means of communication.
But now such disasters are becoming commonplace. In July this year, north India came to its knees due to unprecedented heavy rainfall that triggered floods in several states including Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.
Also Read: Gaon Connection Releases ‘Climate Connection Report 2023’ on its 11th Anniversary
Floods in the Yamuna in Delhi usually affect the poor who live along the frothy and polluted river. But this July, residents of Delhi-NCR watched in horror as the Yamuna swelled and reached the Red Fort, reclaiming its old course which the city had long forgotten in its rush to grow concrete jungles on the floodplains.
Climate change is no more just an environmental issue; it is a global human rights issue.
When I started out as a journalist in January of 1999 with ‘environment’ as a beat, I was often a butt of jokes and ridicule (how can the birds and bees be a journalistic beat, I was asked).
But, more than two decades later, climate change has become the most sought after beat in the media. Media houses have two or three reporters dedicated to covering the environment with a separate desk that puts together these stories of science, politics and human survival.
This book, Climate Connection Report 2023, is an effort by the Gaon Connection’s team to bring together its reportage on climate change this year in the form of a free-to-download document so that we can join the dots and see a pattern in the scattered stories of the changing environment.
It is also an attempt to bring rural India to the front and centre of climate change conversations, policies and response.
The book is divided into six sections, with one section dedicated solely to Solutions Stories because we believe that there is always a strong human will to respond to the challenge of the century.
I hope you find this book useful and informative, and it pushes you to take a small step, to contribute to solutions. Tell us about it and we will include your story in our next book.
Along with releasing this book, Gaon Connection has also launched its long term project — Climate Connection — where climate science meets ancient wisdom. As part of this, Gaon Connection will regularly document stories of how the traditional wisdom of communities can help respond to the challenges posed by climate change.
Nidhi Jamwal is Managing Editor, Gaon Connection. Views are personal.
